As for him, his people were depending on both of them making the right choices. Even if that meant—
Stop. Find out the truth before you make decisions.
Samael jerked his wings out and performed a flipping maneuver off the back of the perch that shot him between two other dragons descending in wide circles, arrowing him straight down.
Ahead of his trajectory, he sent out thoughts to the men he trusted most among the guard. “Where is he?”
“Captain?” Bero’s voice burst into his mind.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Guafi’s response layered over the other. “You show your face here? Now?”
Another three similar responses turned into a shocked jumble of words and sounds in his head.
“Where. Is. He?” Samael cut through the noise to demand. An order. His men would know that.
Silence—way too long given the order—and finally Amun, his lieutenant, responded with the answer Samael was in search of. “His chambers.”
Samael slammed his trajectory to a halt, flaring his wings in such a way that he changed direction in a sharp arc that bent his back, shooting upward. Toward the perch at the king’s residence.
“On my way. If you’re not already there, get there.” Another order.
He prayed to every god he could think of, even the ones he didn’t trust, that his men obeyed. That he still stood as captain in their eyes.
In seconds, Samael reached the outcropping and landed with the silence of his kind. He stalked toward the door, changing back to human as he did. Finding the door locked, he rapped his knuckles—still covered in black scales as he completed his shift—against glass tempered to block out even dragon fire. A new feature installed in the last few decades.
The curtain drew back to show the pale-skinned face of one of the newer guards among his men. Shock and fear lit the fire in the man’s eyes, a pale gray that glittered almost like silver.
“Let me in,” Samael commanded, using both his voice and the telepathic link he had access to even as the scales faded from his skin.
“Sir. I don’t know—”
The sound of a barked order came from inside the chamber. The guard’s face disappeared, only to be replaced by the harsh visage of Amun.
Only he didn’t unlock the door. “Where the hell have you been?”
Samael scowled. “You know where. Keeping our queen safe until we could find the king. We knew the man she killed was not him, as we said when she spoke to the clan days ago.”
Through the glass, Amun searched his face, no give in the man. The lack of trust in those eyes struck deep. Samael had fought beside these men for ages. Watched them become who they were. Hell, he’d helped most of them become who they were, training them himself.
And now they didn’t trust him? He’d expect that from the king’s council and the people, but from his own men? Fuck them, then.
Amun gave a sharp nod, and the click of the lock sliding back sounded a heartbeat before the door opened.
“Where is he?” Samael demanded as he stepped inside and strode past.
Silence greeted the question, and he swung around to find Amun staring at him with narrowed eyes. “Why are you missing your king’s mark, Captain?”
Fuck. The brand on his hand was still gone.
“Yours isn’t? Mine disappeared when I was told the king was dead.” He glanced at Amun’s hand. Sure enough, the symbol of Gorgon’s house stood out in stark prominence.
“Ours returned when he showed back up.”
Enhanced senses combined with years of honing his skills as a fighter gave Samael a split-second warning before two bodies flew at him from either side. Twisting down and under, Samael took a punch to the kidney as he spun, but his movement sent one of his attackers flying by. Hands up, feet spread and moving, he made sure to keep Amun’s body between him and Bero and the newer guard, so he only fought one man at a time.
At the same time, he kept his senses tuned around him. More than these two had to be on the way.
“You don’t want to do this,” he warned them. “I am not your enemy.”
“Come to the dungeons peacefully,” Amun answered. “And we’ll sort this out properly.”
No. This could be a trap.
Every protective mating instinct inside him went into hyperalert. What if Amun and his men had somehow known he and Meira had arrived, and they had been the ones to send up a false report of Gorgon’s return to lure him out? Separate him from her.
Meira.
I never should have left her alone.
…
Horror gripped her in icy claws as Meira watched from the mirror in Sam’s bathroom. No way was she leaving him out there on his own without backup.
Why were his men attacking him? With Gorgon home, wasn’t that proof that she hadn’t been lying? That the man she’d killed had been a plant?
“No way. Trust has to go both ways, Amun,” Sam snarled.
Those words acted like fire in an oilfield, and all three men moved at once. In a frenzy of punches, kicks, and grappling, at speeds she could hardly comprehend, the men went at each other. As best she could tell, Sam was holding his own. The shorter one with the man-bun, not the one Sam had called Amun, went flying backward thanks to a kick to his chest, knocking into the third younger guy, allowing her mate to face off against Amun, taller than him but lankier. In a swift maneuver that involved a grunt of what sounded like pain, Sam had him in a headlock.
Man-Bun and Youngster jumped back up, rushing them, but Sam swung Amun around, using his body as a blockade even as he rammed his knee into
